Friday, September 23, 2011

Apologies for the interruption, I know you have been devastated. So without further ado, my latest musings.

I’m beginning to wonder if a lot of the situations I try to keep myself out of are the exact situations that God wants me in the most. I spend my whole life trying to make myself comfortable, stable, happy and content, lacking and wanting nothing. When change is on the horizon, I stress out and worry what problems will arise as my world evolves. If I’m discontented, I twist and turn and whine and struggle to find which aspect of my life is leaving me unfulfilled, and then I embark on a mission to fix it as quickly as possible. And I think I’m starting to realize that no matter where I am, I’m exactly where God wants me to be, and if I’m in one of those tumultuous times, then I’m really where God wants me, because those are the places where He can teach me the most. I picture God sitting there watching me run around like a chicken with its head cut off, waiting patiently for me to stop searching all around me and just look up for once. I know all He wants to say to me is Wesley, chill out, if you’ll just let me show you what I’m doing here, you will enjoy this growing process a lot more. He’s going to mould me and shape me through difficult experiences for the rest of my life, so I could make it a lot easier for myself by just accepting that fact and looking for God’s lessons during those times. Also, interestingly enough, I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least a little bit discontented, on the verge of some sort of change in my life, and somewhat uncomfortable with my situation. I think God would probably like for me to realize that life isn’t about trying to get to a certain point and staying there. He wants it to be about seeking Him and finding satisfaction in Him no matter what my circumstances are, because He knows that I will never be at home in this world, and I will never be fully satisfied without Him.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Lord I want to love You,
To long for You, adore You.
Lord I want the song I sing
To be about and for You.
Lord You gave me all I have
So I could give it back to You,
Lord You gave Your life for me
And I will give my life to You.
Lord I want to love You,
To long for You, adore You.
Lord I want the song I sing
To be about and for You.

Monday, May 16, 2011

I wonder how many bugs I've eaten in my life. I'm sitting here eating my lunch, watching one of those little red dot bugs stroll along my table, thinking "get that thing away from my food!", and I can't help but wonder how many of those little guys have sneaked onto my sandwiches just in time for me to take the bite they happened to land on. If I spent five minutes examining every meal I ever sat down to eat, ensuring no bug intrusions before I commenced eating, I probably STILL wouldn't escape the occasional bug consumption. Just a quick reminder of how little control I have over all of the proverbial sandwich-bugs in my life. I could spend all of my energy trying to maintain control of every little thing in my life, but when it comes down to it, I just can't keep all the bugs off of my sandwiches. So bring it, sandwich-bugs, you don't scare me.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Monday, March 21, 2011

I'm reading a book about writing, and it does a lot of talking about first drafts and rewrites, and rewrites, and rewrites, and rewrites. Now I've always enjoyed writing, but I've honestly never been much of a rewriter. I was that person who finished the last paragraph of her term paper ten minutes before it was due, glanced over the paper for any glaring mistakes, and sprinted to class to turn it in three to five minutes after it was due. I have always said that I wished the teacher would email us an hour before the paper was due to tell us we had an extra day, because I think I could have turned in some fabulous second drafts that way. Unfortunately for me, that never happened, so I ended up sliding by with a lot of first draft papers. So this time around, I am determined to train myself how to rewrite my first drafts. Even in the bit of rewriting I have had the privilege to do, I have always been able to find great room for improvement in my pieces. Especially when I leave my work for a while, forget about it, and come back with a fresh eye, I am able to see things that I hadn't seen at first. I can't help but think that life has its own opportunities for rewrites, and I've probably missed a lot of chances for that in my life as well. Obviously I can't change anything that has happened, but that doesn't mean that the possibility for reconciliation and redemption of past mistakes doesn't exist for me. I just have to have the discipline to go back to my work and rewrite relationships or rewrite the way my heart feels toward people who have wronged me. And even if I can't right a wrong I have done in my life, I can rewrite the next situation I am in that is similar to those I have previously messed up. If I have learned from my mistakes, hopefully this draft will be better than the first. I think God always desires reconciliation and redemption of people, relationships, and situations in this life, so He gives us a lot of second chances. And probably third and fourth and fifth chances too. But if I never learn to evaluate my life and see what needs to be rewritten, I may end up reading that first draft back to myself in every second chance God gives me. So perhaps as I discipline myself to go back and write second and third and fourth drafts in my writing, I will gain some insight into how to edit my life in similar ways.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

One verse in the Bible I tend to (purposely?) forget about is in the sermon on the mount when Jesus tells his disciples to love their enemies and pray for, or bless, those who curse them. I know that verse quite well, however I tend not to dwell on the implications of what he is telling us to do. The “love your neighbor” command I can handle fairly well, as long as I consider my neighbors the people who are really nice to me all of the time. And I’m working on loving my neighbors even when they treat me poorly or aren’t as nice to me as I’d like for them to be. But if it’s hard enough for me to love the people who love me when they are mean to me, should I really have to love people who don’t even like me? How on earth am I to make myself feel better about myself without those people to look down upon? Frankly I don’t like to think about what it would mean to truly love my enemy and pray for those who curse me. That means that if someone gossips about me and my friend tells me about it, I should in turn say something nice about them to my friend, ask how they are, and find something they need prayer for to add to my prayer list. How am I even supposed to be sincere about something like that? What if, instead, I simply hold my tongue and change the topic? I feel like that should be enough to keep any hatred from creeping into my heart. But dang it, what if that’s just my excuse to secretly harbor resentment and be able to silently hold a grudge against them that allows me to conjure up all of the flaws they must have in their life that make me better than they are and thus above any petty insults they throw at me to make me look less perfect than I obviously am? Whoa, where did that come from? Surely not from me, because I would never do something like that. So if I have absolutely no tendencies toward the mindset that I just described, which we already established that I absolutely don’t, then why would I have to go so far as to actively love and genuinely care for those who curse me? Shouldn’t their friends (if they even have any) be the ones taking care of that? I have way too many other people to be praying for. The only way I would ever see any benefit in praying for my enemies would be if somehow those prayers and concerns, however forced or fabricated at first, might slowly turn my heart from resentment and hostility toward the kind of unconditional love that God lavishes on all of his children, no matter how wretched they are or what kind of gossip they spread about the rest of His wretched children. And only then, after some miraculous transformation of my heart toward my enemy, would there be any chance that I may treat that person in a way that might startle them into a renewed mindset that I’m not quite as bad as they had heard I was and that maybe we wouldn’t have to be total enemies after all. And perhaps that unconditional love for my enemies would spill over into the rest of my life and color the way that I look at everyone I encounter so that I see them not just as random people but as beautiful children of God. Otherwise I just don’t see the point in going to all of that trouble, do you?

Friday, February 11, 2011

"In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work." - 2 Timothy 2:20

This verse makes me feel so selfish and short-sighted about my role in God's kingdom. I think most of my time is spent thinking about how I want God to bless my life, how He can make me happy, and what He can do for me. Even my worship of Him and the service that I do in His name, in many ways I think that if I do these things, He will make me happier or I will be more fulfilled in some way. Then I feel so silly when I read something like this. God doesn't exist to glorify us and our tiny little lives. We exist to glorify Him! I sit around and ask God to do things for me, and I become impatient with Him when things don't go my way. Who am I to ask God for things to go my way? Especially when my life is about everything but Him and He only exists for my selfish purposes. Because that's not the way things work, is it. No, I only exist for His purposes and to further Hiskingdom. So God's not saying, cleanse yourself of ignoble things, and then I'll make you happier and bless your life more. He's saying, cleanse yourself of ignoble things, and then I'll useyou for the furthering of My kingdom, make yourself ready for Me, and I'll give you work to do for Me. Of course if my heart is in the right place, I will love being used for His purposes more than I would love any other blessings He could give me, but it will take some major reconfiguring of my heart to come to truly understand that concept. I just need that constant reminder from God that we're not in this for me. And that even though we're in it for God, the great part about it is that this is what I was made for, this is my purpose, to glorify God with everything I do, so naturally I will end up happier glorifying God than I'd ever be if I were doing anything else.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

"We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life." -Romans 6:4

I wonder what God imagines when He thinks of the "new life" He wants us to have through Christ. And I wonder how many people live up to His expectations there. I know I don't. When God brought me back to Himself about a year and a half ago, there were definitely some things that I purged from my life and some amazing ways my life was transformed. But by no means was I living a completely new life. And I don't think He means that our whole lives need to be different outwardly once we are baptized in His blood. But I do believe that inwardly we should be dead to our old selves and therefore be living a wholly new life with Christ. And naturally that should manifest itself outwardly in our lives. But twenty-five years of crap is a lot to sift through, and there's a lot of that crap that frankly I don't want to let go of. It's scary to let go of the life that you've been used to for so long. But I feel like it's a bit like being on the Titanic and having to jump onto a lifeboat but not wanting to because I know that up until this point I've been safe on the Titanic. And if I jump into the lifeboat, I can't keep holding on to the Titanic, because eventually it's going to sink. I wonder what parts of the Titanic I'm holding on to that I need to let go of. I know there are plenty of them. And if you asked me on a normal day, I could probably give you a pretty good excuse for why I still cling to them and why it's okay for me to keep them in my life. But when I'm alone with my thoughts and prayers and can really see clearly, I know that in order to embrace the new life God has given us through the sacrifice of His only son, I've got to let go and jump in the lifeboat.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Something I didn't think about in my first post, when naming my blog: we're all headed to the same home. Or at least we should be. We may stray and we may wander, we may take different roads, but in the end hopefully we'll reach the same home. And while we should not hold our road above the roads others are taking, thinking ours is the best or only way, we should be keenly aware of whether those around us are headed in the right direction. None of us, if we saw a child wandering the streets looking lost and alone, would leave him to find his own way. In God's eyes, we are but children, trying to find our ways back to Him. And if we are willing, He will lead us where we need to go. But He also uses His children to help Him find those who seem to have lost their way, and we must be willing to help the lost ones, guiding them back to the right path.

About Me

Hi and welcome! There's not much to know about me, just that I look like the person in this picture, and that I want to write and share my thoughts with whoever chooses to listen, and I hope that person will be you!